Got MBA? Buy that the Right Business!
Brian tweeted an interesting link the other day about a new trend that HBR picked up on. It was about newly minted MBA graduates buying existing businesses instead of going into right into the consulting world.
At the Harvard Business School, for example, the number of MBAs who decide to look for a business to acquire right after graduation has gone from less than a handful a decade ago to more than a dozen, and in an occasional year, twice that amount.
I’m surprised that this number isn’t higher but it’s probably because of the stress that these students experience in the search for that special business.
One of the most common concerns that we hear as we advise our students at HBS is that searching for a business to buy — a full-time endeavor — is too “risky.”
It appears that financial risk has less weight than the finding the right business to buy. This is interesting but makes complete sense to me.
If you want to be an entrepreneur and be successful, you need to either fill a need or solve a problem in an industry that you are passionate about.
This is why the search for that right business can take a long time and requires lots of reflection. Just because a business might be cheap to buy, it might not have long term potential. This is key. You want to find that business that has the potential to disrupt the status quo.
Now go forth and find it.